I don’t remember exactly what I did for the rest of the day after Rene dropped me home. I do remember that my hangover felt something akin to being a frog trying to swim through a washing machine and was demanding my full attention. My consideration and evaluation of the complexities of the situation with had to wait until my liver and kidneys did their part.

Goodbye, Saturday

When I was feeling a little more human again I started to consider the situation. It was a tough spot.

I was already dealing with so much else and the potential drama inherent in getting involved with the boss’s daughter was only going to add to the other stress I was dealing with. On the other hand, I’d liked Rene for a long time and I was absolutely stoked that we’d finally gotten past all the bullshit and gotten it out in the open that we were attracted to each other.

I don’t think I dwelt on it all much throughout that Saturday. I probably watched v8supercars or stared mindlessly at episodes of The IT Crowd, or Community, or Lost, or Breaking Bad, or whatever else I was binge watching at the time. I was no doubt doing my level best to distract myself from what I was going to have to deal with sooner or later, even if I didn’t realise that at the time.

Saturday came and went and nothing happened. My impression of a vegetable continued right through until bedtime, at which point I drifted into the arms of slumber once more hoping that I’d wake up into a world far less complex than the one I left when I closed my eyes.

Sunday, thoughtful Sunday

Sunday arrived a lot more gently than Saturday had. I was feeling like myself again and had accepted that today was the day I was going to figure out what to do about the situation with Rene. I hadn’t contacted her Saturday, so I figured I’d better send something through.

The problem was, I didn’t know what I wanted to say. I had to figure out if I actually wanted to go ahead with it. I knew that I’d told Rene that I’d ask her out but I was pretty smashed at the time and wasn’t exactly evaluating my decisions particularly well. I had to decide what I really wanted and what I wanted to do about it.

I lost most of that Sunday mulling it over.

I really liked her but there was no getting around the fact that her father was my boss, or that getting involved with Rene would get the gossip mill running itself into a frenzy the minute anyone heard. On the work front, I assumed that Gus would soon be ousted and we’d get back to the awesome working environment that I’d experienced before his arrival, and this thing with Rene was a risk that might stop things ever getting back to being easy and fun there like they used to be.

And there was also my proclivity to keep life as simple as possible. Getting involved with Rene was undoubtedly wrought with drama.

But I eventually acknowledged that those concerns were outdated seeing that I’d already gotten involved with Rene. There was no point pretending nothing had happened. We’d hooked up. We’d made it clear we were interested in each other. There was no undoing that, no going back. I was going to have to deal with whatever fallout came my way.

Having accepted that reality, I began evaluating the situation from a different perspective.

What if I think of her as Rene and not just as my boss’s daughter?

Rene was a stunningly beautiful woman. She came from a tight-knit, caring, wealthy family. She was witty, funny, clever, sweet and was nearing the end of her law studies. Rene and her family were constantly participating in charitable events and had always appeared kind, compassionate, caring and sensible people. Rene had always struck me as a generous and charitable young woman in her own right. Looking at it from that perspective, I couldn’t deny that I was essentially debating weather or not I wanted to go out with the girl of my dreams. All of a sudden it seemed like a pretty stupid question.

The girl who I thought was utterly awesome had been so interested in me that she couldn’t help but cry over the fact that I hadn’t made a move on her. I took that to mean she was pretty keen on me. For the first time in my life, someone I thought was too good for me thought I was too good for her. Man, that’s the good stuff. That’s what people chase their whole lives. That’s the sort of thing you take a risk on.

And so I concluded I’d be a coward and a fool not to go ahead with asking Rene out.

It doesn’t have to be a big deal

I rationalised that it didn’t have to be a big deal anyway, not right away anyway. We could just hang out for a while and keep it quiet while we figured out how we got along. If everything went well we’d eventually have to come clean but I already had a good rapport with her family and assumed that if it was obvious I was genuinely interested in Rene, and was treating her well, they wouldn’t necessarily be against me being with her. I got a bit optimistic and wondered if they might even like the idea.

We’d already gotten past what usually happens in the first few dates, we’d just done it all in one night. I remember thinking that was pretty cool because it took a lot of the stress out of it, but I thought it best that if I was going to play the ‘under the radar’ game, we’d better keep things a bit less hands on at the start. I could handle Tim Everlong finding out I was seeing his daughter without him knowing, but I figured getting properly intimate with her could wait until we figured out what we were actually doing.

So that left me with exactly what I’d been looking for: a woman I was properly interested in who I could spend time with doing fun things. Nothing serious, just a cruisy situation where we could get together and go out to dinners and see movies and shows and whatever else we felt like doing. If it progressed from there, that’d be awesome. If it didn’t, whatever, no dramas, we wouldn’t have to tell anyone about it. We could avoid the all drama until there was a situation in which the drama would be justified. It was a win-win situation.

Ask her out already

So I’d figured all that out, and all I had to do was ask Rene out.

Yeah… um… that should have been an easy thing to do, right? Turns out that trying to find the right words was far from simple and there’s that “wait three days” rule thing, so I pussied out and decided to wait for Monday instead. Judge me all you want. It was a fucking tough situation.

At least I knew what I was going to do.

Back soon

OK, so that may not have been the most exciting post but it is somewhat important to the overall story. Things will start sparking up again in the next post.